The Bookshelf #1: Valour, Book II of The Faithful and the Fallen by John Gwynne

5:07PM Update: I decided I am putting it on hold. I'm having to force myself to read and am not having any fun. 

I received the complete quintet of The Faithful and the Fallen for Christmas last year. I was excited about starting a new epic fantasy series and was hearing nothing but rave reviews about this series, so I figured it'd be perfect to fill that niche I'd been missing between Stormlight Archive books. 

I blazed through the first book, Malice, in like a week. It read a lot(and continues to...) like a diet Game of Thrones, with the brunt of the happenings involving court politics, warring nations and a whole mess of giants. The epically fantastical elements that I read epic fantasy sadly have once again taken the backseat, going as far as to not even refer to magic as magic, but rather "earth power". This has been a huge thorn in my side with fantasy following the explosion of popularity of A Song of Ice and Fire in that authors are constantly trying to write fantasy without the actual fantasy elements like they are writing them for the jocks that would poke fun at the kids carrying a copy of Lord of the Rings around.

ARE there fantasy elements? Well yes, thankfully we have the aforementioned giants, wolven, talking animals, slithering wyrms, and... "earth power" and also the apparent coming of the God-War, which I imagine will resurface at some point but has since been a no-show in any meaningful way halfway into Valour. 

I am still enjoying the book for sure, as I do like Corban and his group and have some interest in seeing Maquin get his revenge against Jael, but everything else is struggling to keep my attention and that is why it's taking so long to get through this. Plus I struggle to keep up with who is who and where they hail, what their allegiances are.

Whether I continue with the series beyond Book 2 remains to be seen and if the events at the end of Valour are enough to hook me into reading the third book. Courtly fantasies are not my cup of tea and I will certainly do better to try and avoid them in the future.